Mad tales from the Raj : the European insane in British India, 1800-1858
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Mad tales from the Raj : the European insane in British India, 1800-1858
(The Wellcome Institute series in the history of medicine)
Routledge, 1991
Available at 5 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Europeans in India had ambivalent feelings towards their mentally deranged compatriots. The authorities encouraged medical practitioners to treat European "lunatics" with kindness and respect, but they also insisted on segregating them from the European public, as well as from Indians. This attitude did not simply echo practices in the colonial motherland: it is closely linked to the British imperative of preserving the prestige of the ruling race. Like poor Europeans and vagrants, "lunatics" were seen as tarnishing the image of the British in India. "Mad Tales From the Raj" is an extensively researched study of European "insanity" within the context of British colonalism in early 19th century India. The author challenges the assumption that western medical psychology was impartial, and highlights the extent to which it not only reflected British colonial ideology and practice, but also helped to shape the interaction between rulers and ruled. Waltraud Ernst, a psychologist and historian, shows how the "colonial twist" assumed by European lunacy policy in India is reflected in psychological assessment and clinical treatment.
She also discusses individual patients' life-stories and their experiences of confinement in asylums in India and England. Based on archival sources and medical experts' reports, the book provides an account of contemporary psychiatric treatment and colonial policies. It will be of interest not only to students of colonial history, medical sociology and related disciplines, but to all those with a general interest in British life in the colonies.
Table of Contents
- Ex Oriente Lux - the light of the Orient
- madness and the politics of colonial rule
- ideological positions
- bureaucracy, corruption and public opinion
- the sick, the poor, and the mad
- administrative reforms and legal provision
- the institutions
- the role of institutionalization
- towards uniformity
- inside the institutions
- the medical profession
- the search for fortune and professional recognition
- the medicalization of madness
- the subordination of "native" medicine
- medicine and empire
- the patients
- a passage from India
- the changing fortunes of asylum inmates
- being insane in British India
- medical theory and practice
- popular images and medical concepts
- "moral" therapy, "mental" illness, and "physical" derangement
- diagnostics and therapeutic practice
- aetiology and prognosis treatment
- the question of "non-restraint"
- social discrimination, racial prejudice and medical concepts - east is east, and west is best.
by "Nielsen BookData"